Photographer and Global Traveler Kelly Fitzsimmons
Based out of Boston, Massachusetts, Kelly Fitzsimmons has spent over half her life taking pictures of the world around her. Ranging from lifestyle photography to documentary style portraits, Kelly has focused on capturing stories from across the globe.
We spent the morning talking about her time as a photographer as well as her time traveling the world over. She has traveled to Colombia as a part of a mission to help a displaced population, worked on political campaigns in New York and alongside entrepreneurs in Jordan. She has developed a style that crosses multiple genres and is eager to share these experiences, captured through her lens, with the world.
You can check out here work here: http://www.kellyfitzsimmonsphotography.com/
And listen to the entire conversation below:
Full Transcript:
Annemarie: Welcome to United Planet Radio, a podcast where we chat with leaders,
influencers, volunteers, and visionaries who spend their time promoting our message and
our goal here at United Planet which is cross-cultural understanding. On United Planet
Radio, we have conversations that we believe are needed in the world today, what we call
“global conversations.” Global conversations go beyond borders and, ultimately, unite the
planet. My name is Annemarie and today we are joined by our good friend, Kelly
Fitzsimmons. So, a little bit about Kelly. She is super creative. For more than 25 years, she
has been, through her art, exploring themes of innocence, hope, family, relationships,
curiosity, coming of age, friendships, and the joys and challenges of the pursuit of
independence. Most of that time, she has been spending making heirloom portraits of
children and families, striving to capture timeless images that transcend trends and fads.
So, Kelly is extremely interesting because she has switched career paths throughout her life,
but right now she is a photographer and her photographs in the community of Granizal
made her keenly aware of the universality of the themes that we just mentioned. Despite
the drastically different living conditions and the tragic history of violence and
displacements, commonalities persisted. Through her lens, she saw unwavering hope and
resilience in both the children and the adults. From the innocence of toddlers face smeared
with chocolate, to the aloof often haunting look of the adolescent teens establishing their
identities within a community riddled with poverty and scarce resources. So by combining
both portrait and documentary photography, she is hoping to share a glimpse into the heart
of the Granizal community and honour it to people. She wants to highlight the incredible
humanitarian efforts of the OHI [Open Hands Initiative], HHI, and UdeA [University of
Antioquia] Team and through those images, she hopes a viewer can engage in the struggle
and challenges to see the hope and opportunity to work with equal determination to find
solutions to improve health and offer the options to lead productive lives and build a
thriving community. So, Kelly it is so great to have you here. Thanks for being here with us
today and welcome to the show.
Kelly: Hi, Annemarie. Thank you so much for having me, it’s truly a pleasure to be here at
United Planet and to see the great work you’re doing here. It’s truly an honour to be here.
Annemarie: So, you have a very deep, professional history which is absolutely fascinating
can you talk a little bit about that or talk about your path to visual storytelling. How you got
there and what made you make the switch or make that transition?
Kelly: Yes, thank you. I have been a photographer for almost half of my life now and I have
always enjoyed making images that just tell a story and more recently I have been travelling
across the world with various NGOs and using visual art to tell stories that are more
compelling and that call to action and tell stories that people might not know about. The
program in Columbia that you just spoke of, the purpose was to raise awareness about the
health challenges in displaced communities, and I have done programs in Jordan, and
Ireland, and many in the United States as well, really designed to raise awareness and to
show different communities and that we’re all the same and we all have similar struggles
and that there is beauty in that.
Annemarie: Well, that’s great and I am looking at some of Kelly’s photographs right now and
they’re equally haunting and beautiful in an incredible way. So if I could ask you, what is it
like taking these photos? What goes through your head when you see things that might be
you know you want to call attention to but might be morally difficult? How is that? And
how does that work for you?
Kelly: So, Annemarie, taking pictures and making images of challenging situations is really
difficult at times. To draw an attention to a child that has been neglected or an
environment that is subject to extortion and violence is very challenging, but what I see and
why I feel compelled to make images and share images is that there is a responsibility, these
are the stories that go untold and these are the people that have no voice. So, by sharing
these images, telling their stories, it’s like I can bring these stories to people who would
otherwise not know about them and the beauty of that is that we have new channels for
communication. Social media is a very powerful vehicle for storytelling and visual
storytelling so more people are understanding, and there is a greater opportunity to bridge
divides and address injustice or at least draw attention so we have a greater understanding
of different backgrounds and start building bridges to peace, and I now that is a huge goal
for United Planet and I think that visually and through social media and social documentary
technique, that is a great way to bring those stories out to the open and there is almost a
responsibility to do that.
Annemarie: That’s an amazing answer and I now that you have worked on social media in
the past. It sounds like you think we almost have or you have an obligation to share these
stories and that’s incredible. I know you have done some travelling in the past could you
talk a little about maybe where you’ve been or how those experiences shaped what you do
and how important that is to you.
Kelly: Yes, so I was in Jordan, the country of Jordan, a couple of years and at that program
was with an organization called Open Hands Initiative which is also geared towards bridging
divides and creating a mutual understanding and person-to- person diplomacy and that
program was designed to bring Americans together with Jordanian entrepreneurs and that
was a fantastic program again, just really focused like United Planet on understanding what
each culture is about and it dispelled a lot of myths on both sides. Both cultures had
interesting notions on what the other was like. I know we had women, it was all women,
they were all entrepreneurs under the age of thirty and the American women thought the
Jordanian women were going to be a little demure or, you know, a lot of them were
conservative Muslim women. They were thought maybe perhaps they couldn’t do business
the way that American women did it. The Muslim and Arab women…
Annemarie: How?
Kelly: How? They just thought, you know, there are some misunderstandings that Muslim
women, are under– especially conservative Muslim women who are in full—they are
wearing their veils, they’re wearing hijab, and there’s a misunderstanding that their
husbands will not allow them to start their own business and that might be true in some
Arab cultures, but Jordan is a very much more open and progressive country so there were
some myths about that that American women found to be eye-opening and from day one it
was amazing because they all met each other and they became best friends and those
myths and those divides completely disappeared. The Muslim women felt, not just Muslim
there some Islam, they felt that the American women would be kind of aggressive and bossy
and again they are just these stigmas or these– I can’t think of the word– these stereotypes
that they have of Americans and they found that out to be untrue as well, and their
businesses were so diverse. There was one Jordanian woman who had started an Uber type
service for women in Jordan because there were some rules where you could not ride in a
cab with a man so women had challenges hailing cabs. The American women had amazing
business ideas too and were well into funding and it was an incredible experience.
Annemarie: So if people are listening right now and they want to know where they can find
some of your work, where should they go?
Kelly: You can find me mostly on my website which is
www.kellyfitzsimmonsphotography.com. I am also on Instagram at @kellyfitzphoto and I
try to post most of my stuff there. I am on Twitter, but most of my stuff you can find on my
website and Instagram right now.
Annemarie: So what are some of your plans for the future and you’re going forward? What
do you hope to continue to do?
Kelly: I have really caught the bug with the social documentary work and I am seeing
especially in this day and age that it’s crucial to share ideas and to share stories about other
cultures. I find that we tend to live in a vacuum in our country. What we don’t know is
what we don’t know, but when you can hear stories such as the two young gentlemen that
were in United Planet today shared a little bit about Costa Rica and I have always known as
Costa Rica as a great tourism destination, beautiful beaches, and beautiful forests, but to
hear these two young men speak and see their passion for their countrymen and their
families and that there is so much more to it than a great vacation destination and I think
there needs to be a little bit more cultural immersion in our country and people need to go
to these countries and promote volunteerism and doing all the things that we need to have
a more open society and more open understanding of the cultures that make up our
immigrant population and the world around us. We cannot just live in our own bubble
anymore. The world is increasingly– we do live in a global society despite what some
people want us to think. By accepting and understanding, I think we can move to a more
peaceful world. I honestly do.
Annemarie: Well, part of the reason of what you are doing is so amazing is a lot of people
can’t physically get from one place to another and so you are bringing things that people
might not be able to ever experience themselves so readily available to them through
photography and through these powerful images. That’s really, really amazing and here at
United Planet we believe in global communities, we believe in building bridges cross-
culturally and so what you’re doing exactly aligns with our belief that we are all connected
and we are all human.
Kelly: Absolutely, visual storytelling is just that. It brings the stories to people who can’t
actually go where these stories are and that’s the beautiful thing about social media and its
access is a front-row seat to the movie that is the world and we can’t boil the ocean but, like
I said, every drop counts and we have to fill that up and bring those communities together,
bring the global community together.
Annemarie: That’s funny that you say that because one of our quotes here at United Planet
is “Individually, we are a drop. Together, we are an ocean” and we really believe that and I
know you believe that through your work so that is really funny that you brought that up.
This might put you on the spot a little bit. I’m sorry if it does, but at United Planet, we
believe in building bridges in our everyday lives to build communities and bring people
together. So can you just think of just three things that people can do in their everyday lives
at home to build a more united planet? Anything. And take as much time as you need with
this question because it’s kind of a lofty one, but we just had Dave, for example, on the
show, our founder and president and he said “Smile more.” He said “Smile at people,” “Do
what you can in your community by picking things up, like picking trash up,” anything that
you can do and “Believe in yourself.” Those are his three things so those are just examples,
but if you could think of three things that people can do every day to build a more united
planet and it could be as simple as just smiling at someone.
Kelly: Those are good ones, Dave. I think, one, “Start with your family”. I have four kids and
every day I am trying to model for them how to build a more peaceful and united planet by
being kind or talking kindly about people around me, so I start with my family. Two,
“Volunteer somewhere”, whether it’s just to be a — . My husband volunteered to hold the
flags on the football line on this weekend and he was more engaged with the game, and the
team, and both sides of the team, so it doesn’t have to be “go to the soup kitchen for three
hours” it could just be something small. And thirdly, look people in the eye and say “hi.”
Eye contact means a lot and a smile means lot so it just picks up somebody’s day and maybe
they’ll return that to somebody else.
Annemarie: Those are awesome points. You never know who you could be helping with just
a smile or just looking at someone in the eye or just your own body language. Thank you so
much, Kelly, for being on the show today. It was so great to have you. You were amazing so
thank you so much and we urge anyone listening to definitely check out her website. Her
work is fantastic and you should definitely look into reading about Kelly. Thank you so much
for being here, it was so great to have you.
Kelly: Thank you.
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